DayZ Devblog Reveals Latest Feature Set

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One of the most interesting things from the DayZ presentation at Gamescom (which I still have to find time to write up) was Rocket explaining why they’re working on the kind of feature set we’re seeing in these videos of the standalone, and what that means for the game. Perhaps the most significant is item degradation and damage, because it’s one of the things that will push DayZ back into the direction of the taut survivalism that defined its early months. Rocket doesn’t want us to all shoot each other, because getting things that we’ve all gathered will be much more important. Shoot someone and you probably wreck his kit. Moreover, bullets are now individual items, and you will find less of them, so spending them on a noob for his beans will be a bad idea indeed. Watch the latest thoughts on this sort of thing below.

45 Comments

I think this is just gonna be boring, it’s like they are adding stupid things in like shoes etc to give people a reason to keep playing. I haven’t played dayz for ages, the mods have added way more to it. Epoch has traders and base building, Some servers have A.I which give you a good fight, unlike the zombies who you can just run past lol

No one on the server I play on, seem to care anymore about the stand alone. I do wonder if they have missed the boat abit now the hype has gone.

If they manage to handle that in DayZ, one would think they’d do the same with Arma 3. And porting mods form A2 to 3 is somewhat easy. And considering how much better and more diverse the two maps in Arma 3 are than Chernarus, the standalone really has to offer something great.

Not that I’d buy it either way; I bought Arma 3 for the AAS mods like PR and the dozens of “roleplaying” and zombie mods are just gravy.

Both are built on the ArmA 2 engine are they not? And given that they’ve said there’s stuff from ArmA 3 in the DayZ standalone, I’d imagine the underlying architecture is somewhat similar as well. Wouldn’t make much sense to put anti-cheat improvements into one game and not the other. That said, they have said they’re thinking about enabling Steam’s anti-cheat in addition to Battleye in ArmA 3.

The hackers also do have a lot more incentive to hack in DayZ as well as the whole game is about building up supplies in a very harsh environment.

@Grey Poupon
No they’re not :D
The network architecture is the biggest thing they have done for the standalone, it’s completely different from the one used in arma 2 or 3. In the SA it will be more like a proper mmo (almost everything done by the server and not by the client), which is the exact opposite of what happens with the mod.

Getting the AI to run on the server isn’t that big of a change and doesn’t do much to the netcode, though I’ve got no clue if it’d be moddable on ArmA 3. Item spawns and such were already server based in A2 DayZ. AFAIK the change was more about getting the zombies to roam the whole map, not just where the players are than it was about crippling hackers. Yes, the less information that is sent to the client, the less they can do with it, but that’s not what the change does.

Things they do to cripple hackers are independent from getting the AI to run on the server. Even if the games result in different steps to stop hackers, there’s no telling which game is going to be hacked more before they’re out. My guess would be DayZ simply because griefing is such a big deal there.

It will be impossible to tell until it’s out how effective the anti hack measurements will be, but given that the ARMA 3 beta has it’s fair share of hackers already it’s fairly clear that the ARMA 3 system is closer to ARMA 2 in that regard.

The server architecture is not simply about changing what controls the AI: In the Arma engine, all the data relating to things like AI movements, player movements, gunshots, bullet trajectories etc are shared with everyone, plus individual clients can force other clients to run scripts. It’s all this that gives hackers so much power in DayZ Mod. This data will be completely unavailable to the player in the SA so it should make it impossible to do those kinds of hacks (though I’m sure people will find other ways to be douchebags – it just won’t be quite as easy).

One of the main reasons they couldn’t/wouldn’t just add stricter anti-cheat measures into the mod version was that many Arma 2 mods rely on tools such as script injection, and most players play in an environment where cheating isn’t an issue. So they’re rebuilding the network architecture for DayZ Standalone, but I wouldn’t expect it to be shared with Arma 3 as it would end up restricting what modders can do.

That’s actually one of the main reasons it’s taken so long to get the standalone DayZ to this point. The networking code in ARMA 2 relied on the clients to do a lot of the simulation (e.g. player inventory). DayZ standalone is shifting that all onto the server which will prevent hackers from being able to access most of the resources they had access to in the mod.

No, the main reason most people stopped playing was that there’s nothing to do once you familiarize yourself with the game. Camping in Cherno or Elektro with a sniper gets really boring after a while. Which is also a big reason for why so many people started using scripts – boredom.

If DayZ standalone fails to deliver good endgame content that can promote co-operation instead of open hostilities, it will be stillborn. It will be played just like DayZ is played today – as an open-world FFA deathmatch with a minor zombie annoyance.

Lol, if people need encouragement to work in a team then they’re probably not going to be the best teammates.

If people get bored then they should play with friends, join a clan or fuck off. Hacking makes the game boring for literally everyone (hence why me and my friends stopped playing; because being hacked for all the gear 5 times in a single day is no fun)

It’s not about encouragement, it’s about content. There literally is nothing to do once you’ve got yourself some food, weapons and maybe a car. It becomes even easier when cooperating with people, which leads to boredom and eventual betrayal.

I don’t care if you play with friends or not. Back when I played DayZ, I played with friends because it’s the only meaningful way to play with other people without being shot in the back. Meanwhile, the game should promote co-operation with random people you find on the server. Right now, there is no incentive to co-operate. You see a player, you better shoot him right away, because there’s a 99.99% chance that he will shoot you, because they are a PvPer, because they need your food or equipment, because they don’t trust you, because they are bored, etc. The whole point of the game was to promote player-to-player relationships. Should I team up with this guy I met? Should I trust him? Back when the mod was new, the answer was “maybe”. Nowadays, it’s “no”.

I’ve never had a problem with the “endgame”, every single small thing you do on that game is a tension filled adventure. Simply looking for food is fun when you know that a day 1 newbie can put a bullet in your skull with a scavenged rifle.

Not to mention the excitement of hunting down similarly geared players on clan servers … well untill they bug out ofc … that shit does suck.

The game is about survival, and as far as i’m concerned it doesn’t need any “endgame” trinkets to make it better.

I just tried checking the mod out again, almost all of the servers have lame mods such as no night time, spawn with good weapons, etc. So it seems to me that most of the real players left due to the hackers, and the people left now are those kids who just like playing death match. I’d be fine if those guys decided not to buy the standalone.

Half of the criticism I see for this game seems to say “the hype is gone” and the like. Did any one play it for the hype? I can’t remember sitting down, playing it and thinking “man, the hype surrounding this game is awesome. Totally makes it worth playing” . It’s all hype’s over this, window’s closing that. I think it’s shaping up rather nicely.

His Aussie/Kiwi accent is so pronounced and curious. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone Australia/New Zealand speaking before, and it really is very different from both most variants of American or British English.

Oh, about the game: it seems interesting, but I’m a bit afraid that the stand-alone will be released too late, we already have too many zombie/horror games.

Why you think the guy has no idea? The concept of the dayz mod was really nice. I never got into it due to this terrible Arma2 engine and the crappy technical implementation though. Still hoping for a game like dayz (survival/MP/persistent world) that is properly done.

I played the mod around the time it came out and I fondly recall the series of patches that did little more than add a useless feature, such as tank traps, while fundamentally breaking something vitally important to the game, such as tents and vehicles. Then there was the whole bandit skin thing that was pretty much perfect initially, then got taken out so we could have female survivors. Oh, and the months of teasing about dogs maybe being added to the game.

Most of what I’ve seen from the standalone is “You can wear all kinds of clothes!!!”

I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but I haven’t seen an upward trajectory if you know what I mean. Things might look different from where you sit.

As I see more of these, I grow more and more convinced that rocket has a great idea of what the hardcore fans of Day Z liked originally. Also that he has an awesome goal in mind and a good idea of how to get the game there.

Not sure what to think… the massive degradation for items after one hit combined with scarcity of ammo should cut down on random player killings greatly, and we might actually be able to get that stuff I’ve always wanted to see – trading, an outpost, etc.

On the other hand, I’ve never been so terrified when I spotted another player in Day Z. I’ll miss that. On the other other hand, the few times when I was able to form a makeshift team was the most fun I’ve had.

Well the main problem was the high end snipers with the scopes and NV goggles, whilst in the game were rare as all fuck (I found maybe 1 AS50 and a couple of NVGs in 100 odd helicrashes). The number of people hacking those items in was astronomical.

So, even for people who had a stringent no hack policy it wasn’t hard to have a steady supply of these weapons from other players.

Having all this stuff server side will make high end weps infinitely more valuable and thus less used.

I like the idea about your gear potentially getting damaged by getting shot. That’s a smart feature to push players away from just shooting anyone they see.

It forces a difficult choice on people prone to shoot first: Risk using ammo and having nothing to show for it. And potentially alert the zeds, and other predatory players. Also, having shot someone, you’ve lost a potential ally.

Now if they can make the zeds an actual threat and have real scarcity of ammo and supplies, they might actually have something.

I think it depends how they handle the item degradation, I would be annoyed if my AK fell apart after using a few clips (Stalker style) instead of it being damaged from something like being physically shot to shit.

As for food and drink, It could work as long as:
– My character doesn’t have the appetite and metabolism equal to an entire country
– The actual interface isn’t a clunky awkward to use mess (Previous DayZ incarnations)

Wait.. what? You want a survival game without hunger and thirst? That’s like… the whole point of a _survival_ game…. everything you do is ultimately so you can eat. I don’t think survival games are your cup of tea if you think they should be regular FPS games.